The U.S. Office of Personnel Management is issuing a proposed rule that would redefine the geographic boundaries of the Harrisburg, PA, and Scranton-Wilkes-Barre, PA, appropriated fund Federal Wage System wage areas.

DOE is reorganizing its test procedure for beverage vending machines into an Appendix A and an Appendix B, which will be mandatory for equipment testing to demonstrate compliance with any amended energy conservation standards arising out of DOE's ongoing BVM energy conservation standards rulemaking.

The Draft Environmental Impact Statement implementing the 2008 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Biological Opinion and the 2009 National Marine Fisheries Service Biological Opinion is ready for public review and comment.

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Action

Notice.

Summary

The Department of Commerce, as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, invites the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on proposed and/or continuing information collections, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, Public Law 104-13 (44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(2)(A)).

The Census Bureau conducts the SIPP, which is a household-based survey designed as a continuous series of national panels. New panels are introduced every few years with each panel usually having durations of one to four years. Respondents are interviewed at 4-month intervals or “waves” over the life of the panel. The survey is molded around a central “core” of labor force and income questions that remain fixed throughout the life of the panel. The core is supplemented with questions designed to address specific needs, such as obtaining information on household members' participation in government programs as well as prior labor force patterns of household members. These supplemental questions are included with the core and are referred to as “topical modules.”

The SIPP represents a source of information for a wide variety of topics and allows information for separate topics to be integrated to form a single, unified database so that the interaction between tax, transfer, and other government and private policies can be examined. Government domestic-policy formulators depend heavily upon the SIPP information concerning the distribution of income received directly as money or indirectly as in-kind benefits and the effect of tax and transfer programs on this distribution. They also need improved and expanded data on the income and general economic and financial situation of the U.S. population. The SIPP has provided these kinds of data on a continuing basis since 1983 permitting levels of economic well-being and changes in these levels to be measured over time.

The 2008 panel is currently scheduled for 4 years and will include 13 waves of interviewing beginning September 2008. Approximately 65,300 households were selected for the 2008 panel, of which 42,032 households were interviewed. We estimate that each household contains 2.1 people, yielding 88,267 person-level interviews in Wave 1 and subsequent waves. Interviews take 30 minutes on average. Three waves will occur in the 2008 SIPP Panel during FY 2011. The total annual burden for 2008 Panel SIPP interviews would be 132,400 hours in FY 2011.

The SIPP is designed as a continuing series of national panels of interviewed households that are introduced every few years with each panel having durations of 1 to 4 years. All household members 15 years old or over are interviewed using regular proxy-respondent rules. During the 2008 panel, respondents are interviewed a total of 13 times (13 waves) at 4-month intervals making the SIPP a longitudinal survey. Sample people (all household members present at the time of the first interview) who move within the country and reasonably close to a SIPP primary sampling unit will be followed and interviewed at their new address. Individuals 15 years old or over who enter the household after Wave 1 will be interviewed; however, if these individuals move, they are not followed unless they happen to move along with a Wave 1 sample individual.

Comments are invited on: (a) Whether the proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper performance of the functions of the agency, including whether the information shall have practical utility; (b) the accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden (including hours and cost) of the proposed collection of information; (c) ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected; and (d) ways to minimize the burden of the collection of information on respondents, including through the use of automated collection techniques or other forms of information technology.

Comments submitted in response to this notice will be summarized and/or included in the request for OMB approval of this information collection; they also will become a matter of public record.